I need to tell you about some new music I made with my buds. Ondrej, a great drummer, and Chris, a phenomenal bass player, came over to my house and we played music for an hour or so. As usual, we had no plan. And as usual, I recorded every second. It's a jammy, trippy, and odd journey through whatever popped into our brains while we played. I would be honored if you would check it out. The album is free to download here. And here's some footage the three of us shot accompanied by one of the tracks. Thanks!
My new album, Sleep/Walk Situationer, is available right here. I wanted to make something a little different, so instead of recording it digitally, like normal, I recorded the entire thing directly onto some late 80s/early 90s (and very used) Radio Shack Supertape brand cassettes. Then I imported the tapes onto my PC and mixed the sounds I recorded very minimally, spliced them all together, and then recorded them back onto cassette before finally saying, "Okay, that is enough of that!"
I quite enjoy the results of recording the album this way, though I will probably never do it again! The unpredictability of old cassettes and old analog gear is awesome but the way the album sounded as I was playing it was on a different planet than what I ended up with. The normal bias cassettes and my old tape deck stripped almost all of the low end out and overall, the album is too treble-heavy for me. And full disclosure: when I had the files on my computer, I turned the bass back up only for it to be stripped out again when I put it back on tape. "LOL" as my grandparents used to say.
My co-worker described the album as being like walking by the hidden speakers in Tomorrowland. And I like that very much! I also got a review from a very kind soul on Bandcamp. Warpfan said: "This album is not only the perfect cure for your Night Journal
Forgery symptoms (it handily dispatched with mine), but also for
overly-commercial, cookie-cutter music. Armed only with a guitar and a
few pedals, the slow wizard weaves a warm, curious blanket of sound that
at times evokes Autechre, theremin music, Boards of Canada, Japanese
koto, and Doctor Who soundtracks. If this sounds good to you, snap up
one a hand-drawn cassette today. Less is definitely more on this album. [wizard emoji] Favorite track: Side B."
I gave the album some lore about the titular device and hand drew and hand colored all of the cassette covers. That process, like making the music for the album, was very soothing. It's called "art therapy" and I invented it. Pretty soon, I'll be teaching courses on my revolutionary technique.
As for the music of Situationer, I limited myself to one guitar and all the guitar pedals at my disposal. There are no drum machines or synthesizers this time around. I wanted to see if I could make something soothing or, at the very least, moody, with a limited amount of tools. And I had a stash of 90-minute tapes that needed to be used. So, I recorded about 2 and a half hours of music and then cut it down to 90 minutes for the tape.
But what about that lore? Here's the story of Sleep/Walk Situationer from the liner notes: "In May of 1994, Dr. Eva Jelion received word that her estranged daughter
Era had been killed in an unlicensed somnambulistic spelunking
accident. Dr. Jelion set about inventing the Sleep/Walk Situationer, a
preintuitive synapticolater in order to prevent sleepwalkers from ever
coming to harm again."
Here's me goofin' around with a synthesizer, a sequencer, and a guitar pedal. My pal David Assassino told me this one sounded creepy, so I thought I'd share it here.
Recently I talked about how I've started a new YouTube channel for my music projects called The Slow Wizard. For the first ever Halloween Special, I filmed me twiddling some knobs! How is that different from any other episode of The Slow Wizard? That's a fair question! This time I used my Rob Zombie's Halloween II flag as a tablecloth. I can hear your oohs and ahs echoing from your caverns right now. I attempted to make these particular sounds to spookier than normal. Hopefully, I was successful! Before I go I just want to thank all of you who are still following this old blog. You are all amazing folks. Talk to ya later!
Hi there, pals. I have started a new YouTube channel called The Slow Wizard. It's dedicated to my strange sound ventures. A little bit of background: I've been collecting guitar pedals and music gear for many years now and I thought that I needed a new venue to present my tinkering with such things. I'd be honored if you'd check it out and consider subscribing. While it's not exactly movie related, these sounds are directly inspired by the horror and cult film soundtracks I love so much. Season 1 of The Slow Wizard will focus more on guitar playing and guitar pedals while Season 2 will be all about them synths. Anyway, here's the first episode:
